Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior

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All Rise...

Judge Clark Douglas has been known to engage in all sorts of suspect behavior.

The Charge

A powerhouse cast takes on unforgettable cases!

Opening Statement

"Let's fill in the blanks, people!"

Facts of the Case

The Behavioral Analysis Unit (or BAU) is one of the FBI's "Red
Cells," a group that works outside the bureaucracy of the agency and
reports only to the F.B.I. director (Richard Schiff, The West Wing). The team is lead by the
grim, anti-authoritarian Sam Cooper (Forest Whitaker, Repo Men), who is aided by the grim
ex-convict John "Prophet" Sims (Michael Kelly, The Sopranos), the grim techo-whiz Penelope
Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness, Criminal
Minds), the grim tough gal Gina LaSalle (Beau Garrett, Tron: Legacy), the grim ex-British
Special Ops soldier Mick Rawson (Matt Ryan, Layer Cake), and the grim audience
surrogate Beth Griffith (Janeane Garofalo, Wet Hot American Summer).
Together, these people use their psychological expertise to track down a variety
of psychopaths.

The Evidence

It often seems only thing CBS loves more than crime dramas is creating
spin-offs of its many crime dramas. After all, this is the network that is
currently airing CSI: NY, CSI: Miami and NCIS Los Angeles (for that matter, even the
original NCIS is a JAG spin-off). Though spin-offs are
frequently very different beasts from the shows which spawned them, the CBS
crime show formula is pretty simple: do the exact same thing as the flagship
show, but with some new faces and locations. Perhaps it was inevitable that CBS
would eventually attempt to expand its critically panned yet high-rated
Criminal Minds into a larger franchise. Enter Criminal Minds: Suspect
Behavior (which might as well be called The Way Criminals Think: The Way
Criminals Behave).

I didn't request this set for review, as most of CBS' dramatic programming
does very little for me (save for the lightweight but entertaining reboot of Hawaii Five-O and the thoughtful,
well-crafted The Good Wife). Even so, I
wasn't exactly disappointed to receive the assignment. After all, Forest
Whitaker's previous significant television outing (his extended guess starring
turn on The Shield) was magnificent
and the supporting cast certainly included some talented folks. Surely the show
would be at least moderately enjoyable? Sadly, this wheezy program turns out to
be abominably exploitative at worst and rather dull at best.

Though there are quite a few crime shows on television at the moment (or at
any given moment since the medium began), Criminal Minds: Suspect
Behavior somehow manages to be a textbook example of everything that's wrong
with the genre without managing to capture any of its redeeming qualities. If
you ever need to write an essay on the negative aspects of American television,
I suggest picking any episode of this program as the foundation of your
case.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior is so poorly written (either due to
network-driven cynicism or basic lack of ability among the writers, though I
suspect the former) that it often plays as a parody of gritty network crime
shows. It's only takes two episodes for a violent criminal to smile at Whitaker
and say, without a hint of irony, "We're the same, you and me. Stop
pretending we're not." Whitaker then proceeds to launch into a dramatic
monologue that he simply can't sell no matter how valiantly he tries—even
allowing a single tear to roll down his cheek at a precisely timed dramatic
moment completely fails to make the scene seem anything less than ridiculous.
The dialogue is simply too wretchedly overcooked for any actor to sell. Consider
the following exchange between Whitaker and one of his suspects:

Suspect: Do you believe in God? There's a symbol on your holster. It's
Samuel. He's an angel. Angels only exist in servitude of God.

Whitaker: And you, Marcus, name derived from Marchosius, an angel who fell
from heaven and became a demon. Is that you?

To be sure, the acting is bad all around, but very few people have the
ability to turn bad material into something resembling a respectable performance
(here's looking at you, Jeremy Irons). Additionally, the actors haven't been
given characters to play. Rather, they've each been given a generic one-note
trait and the direction that they must not demonstrate charm or a sense of
humor. Basically, it's one tedious character with six different faces (hey, kind
of like a CBS crime show spin-off).

The formulaic banality of Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior is bad
enough, but the problem is compounded by the manner in which the show so
consistently wallows in cheap exploitation material. While many crime shows
attempt to find bad guys and deal with the aftermath of crimes, Criminal
Minds: Suspect Behavior feeds us a steady diet of scenes in which we witness
the criminal of the week engaging in all sorts of heinous behavior: frightening
little girls he later plans to murder and rape, emotionally manipulating women
into murdering someone else…all that good stuff. This show shamelessly
feeds lowest-common-denominator desires to revel in this rubbish while
self-righteously pretending to be above it all and spending a generous amount of
time asking its characters to act outraged at all of this awfulness. They should
be outraged at CBS for putting them on such a god-awful program. Thankfully, the
series ended after 13 episodes (all of which are included in this
collection).

This 4-disc set offers a typically polished television show transfer, though
there are a number of scenes that look a bit soft (this is entirely due to the
manner in which is was shot, however). Audio is okay, though the music ranges
from irritatingly generic thump 'n bump crime show music (I swear, they're using
the same four cues on about sixty different shows right now) to embarrassingly
overblown melodies that come out of nowhere (such as a large-scale choral piece
that plays during the aforementioned Whitaker monologue) to oddly-employed song
selections (one episode opens with Whitaker riding a motorcycle to the strains
of The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"). Supplements are
atypically generous for a cancelled television show, as you get a handful of
audio commentaries with assorted cast and crew members, several featurettes
("Alternate Reality: The New Criminal Minds," "Inside the Red
Cell," "The Profiler," "House of Corpses" and
"Loved Ones"), a gag reel (nice to know these actors do smile on
occasion), some deleted scenes and the spin-off episode of Criminal
Minds, which introduced the characters. For some reason, this collection is
dubbed "The DVD Edition" instead of "The First Season" or
"The Complete Series." Pay no mind to that silliness.

Closing Statement

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior is one of the crummiest, most
formulaic crime shows a network crowded with crummy, formulaic crime shows has
produced. It's a waste of Forest Whitaker's talents and of your time.